Doba's Dropshipping Blog

When Ovais Ali wakes up in the morning, he knows full well that before the day is over, he’ll have worn two completely different hats. This fulltime software engineer moonlights as a successful part-time ecommerce entrepreneur, where a good deal of his sales are processed by Doba and fulfilled by Doba’s drop-ship suppliers. The way Ovais figures it, with as much work as he has to do during the day as an engineer, the only way being an ecommerce merchant at night would work is if he didn’t have to take on the burden associated with managing an inventory and processing all the shipping himself.

As a result, choosing to be a drop-ship merchant allows him to travel and be with his family in Karachi, Pakistan and Windsor, Canada. In fact, all that globetrotting was a major factor in Ovais’ decision to build his online business. Being able to work anywhere in the world is why he’s been a Doba-affiliated member since the summer of 2009, selling products on Amazon under the store name USA Wholesaler.

Meet Ovais:

Doba: How did you get started with Doba?

Ovais Ali: A friend and I started selling products on eBay in order to supplement our income. My friend came across some information about Doba, and that turned out to be the perfect solution for our business needs. He found out that Doba specializes in drop shipping, which makes it possible for us to sell products on Amazon and not worry about warehousing, packaging or shipping. It gives us the freedom to run our Amazon business from anywhere — all we need is an Internet connection and relationships with drop-ship suppliers. Doba is one of our drop-ship technology vendors.

Doba: How does Doba help grow your retail business?

Ovais: Besides having a huge catalog of drop-ship products, Doba has (more…)

CyberSource, a payment management company and subsidiary of Visa, Inc., has released the results of its 13^th annual online fraud survey showing merchants made a stronger foothold against the bad guys in 2011 than any year in the history of the report. On the flip side of that coin is that dollar losses were up for the year, with merchants admitting that online fraud is getting more difficult to detect.

Each year, CyberSource evaluates numerous company surveys to come up with this data and publishes it for free. We here at Doba took part in the 2009 survey and we have turned to it every year since to benchmark our efforts against other eCommerce companies.

Of course, what caught my eye in this year’s report is that the industrywide decrease in fraud order attempts against online retailers corresponds with an increase in the dollar value of the fraud orders being attempted. The percentage of online orders that turned out to be fraudulent dropped to 0.6 percent last year compared to 0.9 in 2010. Meanwhile, losses were up to an estimated $3.4 billion last year, with merchants claiming fraud is becoming more difficult to detect. This has prompted many of merchants to spend more for fraud detection tools to automatically screen their orders.

One of the things this report tells us is that these persistent fraudsters are angling to get more (more…)

When he’s not scrambling around Doba world headquarters doing all the tech stuff that keeps this place humming, our new Director of Technology, Lance Steelman, is scrambling around home, taking care of a half-dozen children. Oh, yeah, and he coaches and plays team sports, too.

Meet Lance:

Doba: Who are you and what do you to do here at Doba?

Lance Steelman: I’m the crazy guy who had six kids in seven years — and five of them are girls.I am the director of technology at Doba, which means I’m in charge of all software development, third-party integrations, technical support, internal hardware and software needs, and pretty much anything else that someone can justify linking to IT.

Doba: What did you do prior to coming to work for Doba?

Lance: Prior to Doba, I worked as VP of development, Chief Technology Officer, and manager of business systems at (more…)

Football’s been a dominant feature on the television screen these past few week, what with the NCAA College Football Bowls all wrapped up and the New England Patriots and New York Giants getting ready for a Super Bowl rematch come Feb. 5. So my purpose in writing this blog post is to show you how we online retailers can come out ahead with both the “winners” and the “losers” in these competitions.

Football fans go to great lengths to support their favorite teams and players. They spend the entire season (and pre-season) following the progress of their own brand of “men in uniform,” all in hopes that their team will win one championship or the other, or their favorite player or fantasy pick will do well. However, only one team can hoist the championship trophy at the end of the season. Obviously there is opportunity in marketing products of the “winners.” but that doesn’t mean you as an online retailer can’t still win with the “losers” as well.

Believe me when I say (more…)

Doba recently partnered with Savtira (www.savtira.com), an e-commerce platform provider that’s well known for building online stores for clients who sell both digital and physical goods in one shopping cart. This new partnership adds an additional 1.75 million items to Savtira’s already extensive multi-million-item catalog.

A newer provider of B2B cloud commerce solutions, Savtira’s catalog line delves deeply into the digital — offering music, movies, games, audio/e-books and software. Savtira assists merchants by taking care of the grunt work, including obtaining the licensing and agreements for digital media. This time-consuming and often difficult process is just one less problem for its clients, enabling the Savtira customer to focus instead on growing their ecommerce business.

In addition to digital media, Savtira also provides merchants with (more…)

Up at bat this week is a pair of Doba suppliers that have been with us for a good amount of time — Diamond and Quartz. Like the minerals after which they’re named, these drop-ship suppliers provide hard-edged products that appeal to a large customer base.

Supplier Diamond (active in the Doba catalog since June 11, 2003) is a leading distributor of electronics, gadgets and gizmos. Diamond carries a vast array of fun and useful products that range from iPod alarm clock docks and laser printers to Swiss Army knives and touch-screen computers. Diamond’s offerings include many of the (more…)

Looking to heat up your first-quarter sales? It’s still a month away, but now’s the time to start promoting Valentine’s Day-related merchandise. Don’t think for a second that just because you sell men’s shoes or baby supplies that you can’t reap the rewards of a Valentine’s Day promotion.

The National Retail Federation reported that American’s spent $15.7 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day gifts in 2010, making this made-up holiday the fourth most popular shopping holiday of the year, just behind the winter holidays of Christmas/Hanukkah, back-to-school and Mother’s Day. And while it’s true that the overwhelming majority of dollars spent for Saint Valentine’s Day go toward flowers and candy, there’s still enough romance in the air for you to get in on the action with a creative merchandising act of your own.

Here are just a few ways your online drop-ship store can leverage Valentine’s Day to your benefit:

Think small and bundle: While Valentine’s Day is among the most popular gift-giving days of the year, consumers tend to spend less because they’re still hurting from the holidays. Others are saving up for Mother’s Day, spring break or summer vacation. That’s why it’s a good idea to promote small, bundled items — not as the primary cupid-day gift, but as an additional way of expressing one’s love.

Go red: Almost every online retailer, regardless of niche, has red or pink merchandise. And with the Doba catalog stocking more than 1.75 million items, you’re bound to find something to fill the bill. To get in the spirit of things, it doesn’t hurt to alter the appearance of your homepage, adding splashes of red along with calls to action that put the focus on (more…)

For more than a decade, shopping cart provider 3DCart has operated an ecommerce platform that has grown to include 10,000 merchant users throughout the world. And now, 3DCart has partnered with us here at Doba, developing an automated integration that retailers can use to easily tie the extensive Doba catalog to their 3DCart-powered store.

Just recently, 3DCart completed its Application Programming Interface (API) integration with us, becoming Doba’s newest Certified Integrated Partner. What exactly does this mean to those contemplating an online business or beefing up their existing business? This partnership means 3DCart can leverage its ecommerce platform, offering its merchants access to new shopping categories and more than 1.75 million name-brand wholesale products currently available through Doba.

What 3DCart has been bringing to the plate for more than 10 years are all the tools needed to create a website and online store. It offers more than 50 website templates as well as the ability for merchants to create their own designs using HTML and CSS. With 3dcart’s 3dZoom, product images are easy to create and enlarge; and its Quick Edit Bar enables design changes to be made in rapid fashion, adding categories, products and web pages in real time.

In addition, 3DCart makes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) extremely easy with more than 25 tools to help users to build and market their online store. 3DCart’s social media tools enable merchants to simplify the practice of (more…)

It’s been a couple of weeks since most New Year’s Eve celebrants made their resolutions for 2012, and there actually might be a few folks this far into the year who are still sticking to the program. This is the time of year that people reflect on and address experiences from the previous year and make a commitment to make a change (for the better) in a habit, project or lifestyle.

It’s too bad we use so many negative words to describe negative qualities or actions when we consider New Year’s resolutions. We often address bad habits involving tobacco, alcohol or drugs, or biting our fingernails, and other issues that are detrimental to healthy lifestyles. And, of course you can’t discuss resolutions without talking about the ever-so-popular “lose weight” resolution.

Fitness centers and gyms owe the majority of their success to this specific resolution (I have to admit that I’m guilty of making this resolution — more than once). Here’s the thing. As online retailers, you too can take advantage of this particular resolution. And here’s something else: You’ve got a big advantage over brick and mortar gyms. That’s because (more…)

The sound of music, it seems, has become a big part of everybody’s lives these days, and we’re not talking about the Julie Andrews musical. With incredible advances in technology, music comes with a new vocabulary, with devices like the iPod replacing Walkman and CDs replacing vinyl and brand new words like shuffle, flash memory and storing and downloading music from the cloud (whatever that means). Your customers take for granted that they can personally own every Bob Dylan song ever recorded — live concerts included — and keep them on a single device.

In this blog post, the last such eBay Product Spotlight for 2011, I’ll share ways to successfully (more…)